This year, Sundance films take family to a new level

Indie filmmakers are not beholden to studios or focus group analysis when casting their movies. So they take intriguing leaps, including adding family members to the cast.

Robert De Niro attends a reception for "Remembering the Artist: Robert De Niro, Sr." at Sundance. De Niro's father's career as an artist is the subject of the documentary.(Photo: Michael Loccisano, Getty Images for HBO)

PARK CITY, Utah -- Family ties loom large at this year's Sundance Film Festival.

Not only are filmmakers making movies about their parents and grandparents — like Remembering the Artist: Robert De Niro Sr. and The Battered Bastards of Baseball -- but they're also involving their young children.

Two of the most talked-about and well-received works feature filmmakers casting their own children in major parts. Boyhood, written and directed by Richard Linklater, stars his daughter Lorelei, 20, in a key role. It's one of the festival's most ambitious projects, shot over a dozen years, with shoots lasting a few days each year.

Writer and director Richard Linklater, right, poses with cast member and daughter Lorelei Linklater at the premiere of their film "Boyhood" during the Sundance Film Festival, on Jan. 19, 2014 in Park City, Utah.(Photo: Danny Moloshok, Invision/AP)

Natural as her performance was, the young Linklater wasn't always so keen on being an actress.

"At about year three, Lorelei came up to me and asked 'Can my character, like, die?' " Linklater joked after the three-hour film's premiere.

Writer-director Maya Forbes cast her 12-year-old daughter Imogene Wolodarsky in her autobiographical film Infinitely Polar Bear. She plays Forbes as a child and gives a strikingly authentic performance.

The moving and funny film is the story of a manic-depressive father (Mark Ruffalo) who tries to win back his wife (Zoe Saldana) by taking primary responsibility for their daughters (Wolodarsky and Ashley Aufderheide).

For Forbes, the casting made infinite sense.

Actress Imogene Wolodarsky and her mother filmmaker Maya Forbes pose for a portrait during the 2014 Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2014 in Park City, Utah.(Photo: Larry Busacca, Getty Images)

"I used to tell my kids stories about my father, who died in 1998," she said. "Imogene was very familiar with this whole story and the context and the themes. And she loves to get up on stage and make speeches at her school and likes to play the piano and sing. She's a performer."

Forbes said some people questioned whether having her daughter play the role was the right thing to do. But she was certain, particularly after seeing her daughter audition with Ruffalo and Saldana, that she had found the right actress for the part.

"Anytime you work with a kid you're taking a flyer because they have no body of work," said Forbes. "But I thought Imogene is going to understand where these kids come from, their milieu.''

And Forbes had an ace up her sleeve: She knew how to push her daughter's emotional buttons.

"I could make her cry," said Forbes. " And I didn't have to worry 'What if I damage this kid forever'. Imogene's part is so demanding because of all the emotional stuff. I would go into a corner with her and I would cry about what the scene was about and tell her why I was crying and what it meant and she'd cry and then we'd go do the scene. She has such a huge heart."